Today marks one month with my Xbox 360, which makes it timely to reflect on my experiences thus far. When I brought it home from Christmas festivities, I found the system easy to hook up: the same A/V cables as my original Xbox worked, requiring less rewiring, and a nearby AirPort Express I'd previously installed provided the wired connectivity that my Wii gets wirelessly. I didn't appreciate the need for this additional hardware and cabling.

But once the connection is made, the Xbox's superior online experience is immediately evident. Though Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) games may not be superior to WiiWare, the availability of free demos for both downloadable and retail games gives any gamer hours of free entertainment. I immediately queued up 57 downloads, playing one while others continued in the background. Eventually I turned the system off and let the remainder continue into the night.

However, the transition from Wii to 360 has not always been easy. With the Wii being the only current-gen console in my household for more than two years, I've grown accustomed to its innovative and intuitive controls. Though I was excited to finally have hands-on experience with all the 360 titles I'd heard so much about, I found their controls both daunting and archaic. I actually have to push buttons to make things happen? How quaint! One look at the complex control scheme for Dead Space, and I quit. It's not that I'm incapable of learning detailed controls, but my gaming preferences have shifted sufficiently that I prefer pick-up-and-play approaches.

It's no wonder, then, that a month later, I've yet to put a single disc in my console. In a recent episode of the Major Nelson podcast, the observation is made that a new Xbox owner who downloads the top XBLA games will be set for awhile. Such has been my case. Not counting freebies like Dash of Destruction and Aegis Wing, I without hesitation bought Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Pac-Man Championship Edition, and Portal: Still Alive. A demo of Braid assured me it, too, was worth purchasing, and I was delighted to discover a remake of the original Apple II game Prince of Persia. It didn't take me long to beat Bionic Commando and Portal, but I still play Pac-Man every day. I knew these games would appeal to me more than Halo, BioShock, or Mass Effect, and so far I was right; for less than $50 USD, I've gotten hours of accessible and replayable entertainment value. But what's surprising is that, after reading reviews or playing demos, the six retail games I originally listed as reasons to buy an Xbox 360 are now ones I have no intention of buying. And, given the use I'm currently getting out of my 360, I don't see that I need to, either

The 360 is more than just games, of course. I've never purchased movies or television shows via iTunes, but upon a friend's recommendation, I did buy an episode of Scrubs from Microsoft's Video Marketplace. I also registered Rivet (upgraded this week to v2.0), a Macintosh program that lets me stream most audio and video from my Mac to my 360 (though I had to upgrade my OS to Leopard before Rivet would run). I like that the New Xbox Experience allows me to peruse the Xbox Marketplace from my computer at work and queue downloads for when I get home; it provides more opportunity and immediacy for acting upon various news and thoughts I come across during the day.

Without many multiplayer games or even a Gold membership, I've not yet engaged in any online competitions, but that's okay. I've always enjoyed sharing the couch with my fellow gamers, and I don't know that I'd enjoy the remoteness of online play.

In the meantime, I am a very happy, if unconventional, Xbox 360 gamer.

Just a quick heads-up that the soundtrack to World of Goo is now available as a free download. All 27 tracks are included in the 85 megabyte ZIP archive. Album artwork and AAC conversion are optional.

World of Goo is a WiiWare, Mac, and PC game that is one of the best investments I've made for the Wii. It's a puzzle game that uses a point-and-click interface (hence the lack of Xbox and PS3 ports) to build goo-based structures that reach toward a goal. It has a bizarre, Tim Burton-esque sense of humor and a colorful, consistent design. World of Goo is one of the first games I use to introduce virgin Wii players, as I trust it to leave a good impression. The sound effects always garner a chuckle, but the soundtrack itself is also memorable; as composer Kyle Gabler writes, "Influences include Danny Elfman, Vangelis, Bernard Herrmann, Hans Zimmer, Ennio Morricone, and all the big movie guys." So go grab it!

(Hat tip to WiiWare World)

It's well-known that video games have horrible cutscenes. These forced attempts to excise interactivity and replace it with whatever passes for "plot" in a forced attempt to wed gaming and cinema fail more often than they succeed.

Of course, each medium can bomb on its own, too. RiffTrax has been incisively lampooning modern blockbusters for a few years now, but in their former incarnation as Mystery Science Theater 3000, they turned their wit to video games as well, as demonstrated by this video that debuted at E3 1998:

This video was a one-time occasion, but there's no shortage of material to make it into an ongoing series. To that end, I give you Unskippable and their riff of Dead Rising:

Unskippable is apparently a new venture, with only a limited library of previous episodes available thus far. They are sponsored by the same online magazine that hosts the sharp-witted Zero Punctuation reviews, which I've not embedded here due to their mature language, but which I nonetheless personally enjoy on a weekly basis. Kudos to Escapist Magazine for continuing to give gamers a reason to laugh at themselves.

Several months ago, I installed the Homebrew Channel (HBC) on my Nintendo Wii. I thought it would be difficult, and following the directions on the official site confirmed that suspicion, but a walk-thru on Nintendo Wii Fanboy provided me the missing step, laying the Wii architecture bare to my mischievousness.

I have never been a pirate and have no interest in stepping off that path, yet there are still reasons I'd want to hack my Wii. I've always been interested in unlocking the full potential of my consoles, whether it means installing a mod chip in my original PlayStation (to play all the imports I never imported) or letting my Wii's DVD drive fulfill its nature by playing DVD movies, regardless of region. A side effect of having the HBC on my Wii is access to a variety of free homebrew applications, though I've not yet found among them any killer apps.

Until now. Last night, I was alerted to the existence of the WiiApple project, which strives to emulate an Apple II computer on the Wii. Running 30-year-old software on a modern video game system may not appeal to the masses, but it strikes a chord with me. My passion for this classic computer knows no bounds: I'm editor-in-chief of Juiced.GS, the last remaining print publication dedicated to the Apple II; I'm marketing director for KansasFest, the annual Apple II conference in Missouri; and I blog regularly about the Apple II for both Computerworld and A2Central.com. To see the Apple II propagating into countless vessels via emulation warms my heart.

The joy derived from such an accomplishment is more than just conceptual. For example, thanks to ScummVM, I've gotten my Wii to run my (legitimate) Macintosh copy of Day of the Tentacle, better known as the sequel to Maniac Mansion, one of my favorite NES games. The Wii has a great interface for these old point-and-click adventures, and since I've never been much of a computer gamer, this emulation lets me enjoy them from the familiar comfort of my sofa, and not in my office hunched over a laptop.

For all this, I've not yet tried AppleWin myself — I suspect the lack of a USB keyboard to connect to my Wii could be a barrier. But I'll be watching the program's development with interest and looking forward to the day when I can play my favorite 8-bit games with a Wiimote!